Gameloft has released information about their upcoming Real Soccer 2010 which promises a number of improvements over Real Soccer 2009 including the addition of real time online multiplayer.
Gameloft promises a number of new features and more content:
8 leagues, 245 teams and real players’ names thanks to the FIFPro license
Voice commentary for a TV-like broadcast of the match
14 stadiums entirely modeled in 3D to the slightest detail
Go head-to-head with friends online (Wi-Fi) or in local mode (Bluetooth + Wi-Fi)
The game also sports a new directional pad for "a more precise" soccer experience, and you are able to select your player by simply tapping on them on screen.
Here's an early trailer showing gameplay:
Online multiplayer seems to be a big push by Gameloft as they have also promised it coming in Modern Combat and it seems likely to be in Nova as well.
A lot of news came out yesterday at the Apple media event launching the new iPods. Aside from the new hardware releases there were a number of software releases including iPhone OS 3.1 and iTunes 9. A couple of other interesting things to note.
Apple has discounted the iPhone 3.x upgrade for iPod Touch owners from $9.95 to $4.95. So, those holding out can now get the 3.x upgrade for cheaper. The 3.0 -> 3.1 upgrade is free. Of course, if you are already planning on buying one of the new iPod Touches, you can skip it altogether, since the new ones come with OS 3.1 already installed.
Another important thing to note if buying a new iPod Touch is that only the high end (32GB and 64GB) iPod Touches carry the new processor and 3d graphics hardware of the 3GS.
That means buying the cheaper 8GB ($199) will get you the same hardware as last year's iPod Touch. While few games area requiring the new hardware, over time we would expect there will be more.
Ubisoft also took the stage at today's event and said they were putting the finishing touches on Assassin's Creed II for the iPhone. The game is due for release for console systems this November and will also be released for the iPhone on the same day.
Ubisoft emphasized the diversity of animations and sound effects implemented for dramatic kill scenes and also emphasized exploration and customization. Through the use of photo library integration, you can even put your face on the wanted posters found in the game.
The game itself looks to use a different engine than the original Assassin's Creed for iPhone and has an emphasis on acrobatics controlled by touch screen buttons. See the keynote video to see it in action:
iPhone developer Tapulous who is most well known for rhythm game Tap Tap Revenge previewed their upcoming music racer Riddim Ribbon today.
The game puts you in the role of the DJ as you race down a ribbon. Your job is to follow the groove as best you can using tilt controls. You can choose to remix your songs by choosing different paths on the ribbon. Here's the game in action:
At the end of each level, you have created your own unique mix that can be shared with your friends. The game is due in October.
At today's press event, Gameloft took the stage a showed up an upcoming first person shooter that is due later this year. The game has universally reminded people of Bungie's Halo franchise and features mission based scenarios on alien worlds.
We contacted Gameloft who gave us this bullet list of features that will be coming in Nova.
A single campaign that includes dozens of levels
5 weapons
A wide variety of alien enemies
Multiplayer deathmatch & team deathmatch modes over WiFi & Bluetooth
Push notifications
Voice chat
iPod library access
Here's the clip from today's keynote speech showing the game in action:
The game is said to be due for this holiday season.
We don't have any details to report aside from what just appeared on the EA Mobile Facebook page, but these screenshots do look great, and it's hard to argue with such an extensive list of licensed cars. The console version of the game is due in September and unlike their previous Need For Speed title, Shift is more of a sim racer rather than an arcade racer.
Official Car List:
BMW M3 GT2
Volkswagen Golf GTI
Mazda RX-8
Mitsubishi Lancer EVOLUTION
Subaru Impreza WRX STI
Porsche Cayman S
Nissan 370Z (Z34)
Nissan Skyline GT-R (R34)
Dodge Challenger Concept
Ford Shelby GT500
Audi R8 4.2 FSI quattro
Mercedes-Benz SL65 AMG
Chevrolet Corvette Z06
Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4
Ford GT
Porsche 911 GT2
Lamborghini Murciélago LP640
Pagani Zonda F
Aston Martin Racing DBR9
Maserati MC12 GT1
That's all we know right now, hopefully Need For Speed Shift doesn't have the same extremely long development cycle as Need For Speed Undercover [App Store] which wasn't released for quite some time after the early previews.
We will post more information on this game as we receive it.
It's hard to describe the Madden series of games as a franchise anymore, they've been around so long it seems that a more appropriate way to describe the games would be the "Madden dynasty." The first Madden game appeared on the Apple II all the way back in 1989, it wasn't until Madden '94 that the real NFL teams were included, and sports gamers would have to wait another year until the real players were added. When you look back at the 20 years these games have been around, constantly improving each year, it's no surprise that Madden NFL 10 [App Store] is as good as it is.
Madden NFL 10 was one of the titles we previewed at PAX and spent some time with EA who highlighted the many features from the game.
First and foremost, Madden NFL 10 includes all of the NFL players, teams, and stadiums. Around 2000 players are in the game in addition to 200 free agents, and all of these players can be freely traded between teams. Whether you want to follow the real NFL trades and move players around based on the official rosters, or just turn your favorite team in to a dream team of the best players, EA says Madden NFL 10's team management can handle it.
Madden NFL 10 was specifically designed by EA's mobile team, which means it plays nicely as an iPhone game. If you get a phone call, need to answer a text message, or quit the game for some other reason, Madden NFL 10 saves the play you were on and reloads right back at the start of the play without any fumbling around with menus, intros, etc. EA also says they have really put a lot of emphasis on play time. Every cut scene, non-essential player animation, or instant replay can be skipped simply by tapping the screen. While there is a lot of fluff in the game, it's all quickly and easily skipped.
While behaving as a good iPhone app is nice, there were two other feature that I thought really stood out: Action Control Time and Hot Routes.
Madden's "Action Control Time" seems to work so well it wouldn't surprise me if we see a lot more sports games imitating it:. When you're playing regularly, the game runs at normal speed, and while on offense you have buttons to sprint and spin. With Action Control Time enabled, however, the game slows down, and additional controls appear allowing you to do things like juking to the left or to the right. The ability to slow things down allows for extremely precise player movements and changes the game from being action oriented, to a more tactical experience as you're able to avoid tackles exactly when you need to, as well as make for the clearest path you can see to the end zone instead of just catching the ball, running forward, and mashing spin as many times as you can.
Playing defense in Action Control Time works just as well, and with it enabled you can jump for balls, dive tackle, or even go in for a big hit-- A move that has a high risk of missing, but offers a higher chance of the opposing player fumbling. Again, slowing things down allows for a much more precise defensive attack instead of just switching to whatever player is closest to the one with the ball and mashing tackle.
The other cool feature of Madden NFL 10 is "Hot Routes". Before the snap, you can press the Hot Routes button and redraw the path of any of your players with your finger on the screen, you can even make nonsensical zigzags and they will follow your every command. This takes the 300 included plays and lets you customize them any way you want.
Passes are controled by tapping on icons appearing above your receivers heads that range from red to green depending on how open they are. When it's time to kick, the kicking controls work just like swinging in Tiger Woods PGA Tour [App Store]. A kicking interface appears on the right hand side of the screen, you drag your finger down to determine the power, then swipe back up to determine the accuracy of where you aimed. All of the player AI, detailed player attributes, and all the other inner workings are in place to allow you to do things like simulate games when playing in season mode instead of playing through each game yourself. And If you're a football statistics nerd, there are a stupid amount of different statistics being tracked with every play you make in Madden NFL 10.
My brief time with Madden NFL 10 was spent on an iPhone 3GS, though I was assured that they've developed the game to run well across the entire iPhone and iPod Touch family. Madden NFL 10 doesn't require 3.0, although you do need it if you want to access your music from inside the game.
Here's our hands on video with the game from PAX:
We'll have the opportunity to spend more time with the game now that it's been released, but it's overall a really impressive package that we expect football fans will love. EA has also announced that a soon to come update will support "multiplayer". Madden has been launched at $7.99 as a one day sale, and will go up to the full price of $9.99 on Thursday evening.
While there are a bunch of sites out there providing live coverage, here's what's happened so far at the Apple event that is relevant to iPhone gamers:
OS 3.1 is coming today, which will add genius functionality to the App Store. Genius for music can make some fairly intelligent suggestions on similar music to what you're listening to, so genius for apps should be able to hopefully provide some great game suggestions. Genius appears as its own tab in the App Store.
OS 3.1 will be free for iPhone owners and iPod Touch users who have already upgraded to 3.0
iPhone/iPod syncing has been greatly improved, not only with enhanced controls of what music and media syncs, but also what apps sync and what order they appear on your home screens.
iTunes 9 features complete app organization. Deleting apps from the device within iTunes is as simple as clicking a little black X in the corner, just like if you were deleting them from your iPhone
Entire pages of apps can be arranged right within iTunes, the whole system looks extremely useful and should come as a huge relief to those of you who have massive app libraries.
iTunes "home sharing" has been added. Home sharing allows you to share music, movies, TV shows, audiobooks and applications across your home network. Buy an app once and sync it across 5 different computers/iPhones.
All of these new iTunes features are coming today with iTunes 9.
There have been 22 million iPods sold to date and growing, the current iPod market share is 73.8%
Apple has sold 20 million iPod Touches and 30 million iPhones.
"And people are starting to see what a great gaming device this is. When you think about the companies that came before us... when you played those other systems, they seemed so cool, but now when you look at them, they don't stack up against the iPod touch." -Phil Schiller
There are currently 21,178 entertainment titles for the iPhone versus the 607 available for the Sony PSP and 3,680 for the Nintendo DS.
Ben Mattes, Asassin's Creed producer discusses Assassin's Creed 2, said to offer visceral brutal hand to hand combat. Will be available this holiday season. The game even allows you to use the iPhone's camera to put your own photos on wated posters in the game.
Gameloft's Mark Hickey announced their upcoming FPS entitle Nova, which looks very Halo-Like. He also explains that of their 35 titles on the App Store, they've had almost 20 million downloads.
Apple is hosting their iPod Media event today. We will report on all the new products and changes they announce.
But one change has already started to appear... Apple seems to have listened to the complaints from developers and has finally created a top list based on Revenue, not just on Units sold. This should provide developers some reward for having a higher paid app that sells reasonably well.
The new list is live [iTunes Link] in the App Store. The list is still topped by I Am T-Pain but apps such as Uno ($4.99), TomTom U.S. & Canada ($99.99), and Golfshot : Golf GPS ($29.99) are in the Top 10 by Revenue.
We promised to report back once we had more time with Blades of Fury [App Store], Gameloft's newly-released fighting game. We're happy to report, that against all odds, the virtual D-Pad and on-screen controls actually do allow you to pull off some pretty impressive combos filled with special attacks and suprisingly don't seem to hamper the gameplay at all.
The Blades of Fury thread on our forums is filled with people echoing the same uncanny impressions regarding the controls. I'm really not sure what kind of new virtual D-Pad technology Gameloft has pulled out of their R&D department, but between Blades of Fury and Modern Combat: Sandstorm [$6.99] I'm beginning to become a believer in virtual controls.
Gameloft's Official Trailer
The buttons on the bottom right of the screen control your attacks and defenses, you have two types of standard attacks as well as blocking and your special magical attack. Blades of Fury has a cool blocking mechanic in that you can't just keep the block button held down all the time as there is a limited number of times you can block before your armor breaks. The magic attack system is equally cool, and works off a blue meter below your health bar that seems to fill up whenever you take damage or hit your opponent.
This bar fills up in four usable chunks, and depending on how long you hold the magic attack button the more it will use. Tapping the button lets out a low powered special attack that varies for each character. This takes one chunk of the blue bar, holding the button longer eats up two chunks of the blue bar but does more damage, and by holding the button even longer you will use up the entire blue bar but unleash a devastating magical attack.
Each character has a fairly large variety of moves and combos, accessible through the pause screen attack list button and easily perfected in the included practice mode. I didn't have any problem going through the list of moves and memorizing a few combos, which again I found to be very surprising for a game with virtual controls.
There are five difficulty options, ranging from "easy" to "hardest", so players of all skill levels should be able to find some challenge in the game. Easy mode is easy enough that you can win by rolling your iPhone across your face and the hardest mode is just ridiculous. I figured I would give it a try just for the sake of having some frame of reference for the different difficulty settings, and found myself falling victim to these amazing combos unleashed by the AI opponent that had my character juggling through the air powerless to do anything more than get a few hits in before meeting an untimely demise.
If you happen to find yourself administering one of these insane opponent juggling combos, you can also save replays of complete fights. There doesn't seem to be a way to share these replays, but just having the option of recording them is nice. Included in Blades of Fury are many references to their online service Gameloft Live , but no one has been able to successfully log on. There are some statistics in the player profile area of the main menu that detail rankings which I assume have something to do with the currently inaccessible Gameloft Live integration.
The graphics in Blades of Fury are great, and the ten different levels in the game are equally awesome. Each fighter has their own arena ranging from evil looking catacombs to even flying on the back of a giant dragon. Similar to most fighting games, the story is lackluster and the voice work can be laughable at times.
If you're a fan of fighting games, Blades of Fury is worth some serious consideration. Gameloft has been on a roll lately both releasing and previewing games that have raised the bar of what to expect on the iPhone, and Blades of Fury fits in great with the rest of their current and upcoming lineup. If you know someone locally who also has the game, you can play over WiFi or bluetooth, a feature I've been unable to test.
But don't just take my word for it, the thread on our forums is filled with people echoing my sentiments. Ayjona, Nizy, Squarezero and several others have also posted detailed accounts of their experiences with the game.
Donut Games recently gave us a heads up on two of their upcoming iPhone games.
The first is called Cows in Space and is a cute physics puzzler that is shown in this video. Using your Jelly beam, you try to save the cows of the earth which have been left floating around in space.
The second title, however, especially caught out attention due to its unique control method. Donut Games has ported their platformer Gold Miner Joe to the iPhone and has spent time modifying the controls to fit the platform's touch screen. Donut Games wrote:
We fiddeled back and forth quite a lot, experimenting with the controls since this is our first "all directional" platform game. And personally, I can't stand the DPad in an iPhone platform game, and other alternatives I've tried haven't felt natural. We came up with a type of control that I haven't seen in any game before... I guess you could call it the "floating swipe pad", and it works extremely well! Then there's all the elements from the original as well, including 50 shafts to explore.
Despite being a popular genre, iPhone platformers have received mixed reviews largely due to their dependence on virtual d-pads. While some players have no problems with them, some find them near unusable. We're hopeful to see how this works in practice.
A promising sounding report from market research firm Fade LLC claims to have compiled a list of the Top 10 iPhone games by units sold. They offer an enticing list of seemingly precise sales numbers as of July.
1. Tap Tap Revenge Classic - 4,036,348
2. Fieldrunners - 1,638,916
3. Flight Control - 1,381,320
4. Touchgrind - 990,086
5. Zombieville USA - 960,868
6. iShoot - 843,392
7. Super Monkey Ball - 748,063
8. Hero of Sparta - 747,716
9. Enigmo - 686,160
10 The Sims 3 - 669,280
The problem is that Apple doesn't provide these sales numbers, so the only real way to get accurate ones is from the developers themselves and Fade's numbers don't agree with both public and private sales numbers from the developers listed. For example, Pangea revealed their Enigmo sales numbers to be 810,000 as of January 2009 -- far more than the 686,000 reported by Fade.
We contacted a number of the developers on the list, and so far, all of them report the numbers are well off target. Ethan Nicholas reports the sales of iShoot [$1.99] to be at 550,000 copies total so far -- again well off the 843,000 listed above. Illusion Labs (TouchGrind [$4.99]) and MikaMobile (Zombieville [$1.99]) have also responded stating their internal numbers are also well off Fade's. Also absent from the list are Flick Fishing which has sold over 1 million copies and Crash Bandicoot which topped Apple's own list of all-time top app sales. In fact, the only figure that seems close is Flight Control which recently announced reaching 1.5 million in sales.
Due to pent up interest, we expect these numbers to get a lot of attention over the next few days, but they clearly are a very inaccurate representation of the top iPhone game sales.
Update: We've since been contacted by Fade who reveals their methodology. Their sales numbers are extrapolated based on user polls.
iPhone sales numbers are based off of iPhone and iPod Touch user polls. Sales are then verified through official user reviews on products sold. We estimate that over 500,000 users participate in this system with verified sales.
We then use the actual user base that participates in conversion-based metrics to extrapolate sales for titles available on the iPhone and/or iPod touch devices, based on a number of factors including price, reviews, release version, and ratings.
They go on to explain the discrepancy with some of the numbers are due to discounts which may cause sales to skyrocket for periods of time and later taper down. So, while there may be some value in their numbers looking into the future, we're don't think total sales estimates are going to be it.
Gameloft wasn't joking when they said that Blades of Fury [App Store] was coming soon when I met with them at PAX, as it just popped up on the App Store mere minutes ago.
Blades of Fury is a fighting game obviously inspired by Soul Calibur featuring on-screen controls with a virtual D-Pad and set of buttons. In my brief time with the game at PAX I found that they worked well, but wasn't really sure how well the lack of precision inherent in most games with similar control schemes could cope with opponents of higher difficulty than the first few fights. Also included is a gesture-based system where you use the virtual D-Pad to move, then swipe on the screen to perform various attacks.
Blades of Fury has ten characters to choose from, each with different weapons, attacks, and combos. ten arenas are included in the game, along with four game modes: Story, Arcade, Survival, and Practice. Blades of Fury can also be played two player utilizing two devices and a local WiFi or bluetooth connection.
Before letting the emulator into the App Store, Apple required that Manomio remove the BASIC interpreter from the application. Apparently the developer disabled BASIC rather than actually removing it. Many iPhone users found a way to activate the interpreter and, after catching wind of this, Apple pulled the app from the store.
Manomio indicates it has since submitted an updated version of the emulator that addresses the issue at hand. Let's hope this one gets the stamp of approval from Apple and lives a long life in the App Store.
Pirogue Studio'sDinky Ball [$1.99] is fast-paced ball rolling game that managed to suck me in.
While the game is set in a 3D environment, you simply control the ball's forward and backward motion on a circular platform by tilting your iPhone. Tapping on the screen causes you to jump, and the goal is to get your ball to the red box which completes the level. Each level comes with a time limit and you want to complete each level as quickly as you can. The game starts off easy enough, but special types of surfaces soon appear that impact your ball's behavior. Black blocks slow your ball down, while white speed it up. Later levels have disappearing blocks, jumping blocks, and more.
The game comes with 60 levels total but each level is a rather short timed run. Depending on your past experiences with ball rolling games, this is more a feature rather than a flaw. The game's simple controls and short level designs offered quick challenges that kept me interested in the next level, reducing some of the frustration found in other ball rollers. The downside, of course, is that levels can be run through very quickly. I made it through 24 before things got very challenging.
See the game in action:
Overall, the game is nicely put together, but does seem to have some basic flaws. There are 4 save slots that allow you to play the game through starting at Level 1. There's no way to go back and play a particular level, however. While you get timed per level, there appears to be no way to access these times. It's possible that the entire 60 level run time is summed together, but I'm currently stuck on level 45.
Still, a surprisingly good ball rolling game that keeps you playing.
While there are a bunch of sites out there providing live coverage, here's what's happened so far at the Apple event that is relevant to iPhone gamers:
As forum readers 
